Bally Stockholders Approve $5.1 Bln Merger With Scientific Games

(RTTNews) - Gaming company Bally Technologies Inc (BYI) said Wednesday its stockholders approved the company's acquisition by Scientific Games Corp (SGMS) for $5.1 billion. Following the merger, Bally will survive as a wholly owned subsidiary of Scientific Games.

At a special meeting of Bally stockholders, more than 99.61% of the votes represented and cast at the meeting, or about 76.97% of the total outstanding common stock eligible to vote as of the October 20 record date, were voted in favor of the approval of the merger.

Stockholders also approved the non-binding advisory proposal regarding merger-related compensation with a vote of more than 65.83% of the votes represented and cast at the meeting.

Approval of the merger by Bally's stockholders satisfies one of the conditions required to close the Merger. The transaction is still subject to obtaining certain required regulatory approvals and certain other customary closing conditions.

In August, Bally agreed to be acquired by Scientific Games for $83.30 per share in cash. The transaction is expected to be immediately accretive to Scientific Games' earnings per share and cash flow.

The aggregate transaction value is about $5.1 billion, including the refinancing of around $1.8 billion of existing Bally net debt.

The deal is expected to be completed in early 2015.

The merger will expand Scientific Games' portfolio of products and solutions to include leading casino management systems and table products, such as automatic shufflers, proprietary table games and electronic table systems. It will also expand the range of Scientific Games' social and real-money iGaming and iLottery products and services.

The combination is expected to have global sourcing, production, engineering and product development capabilities, as well as a large installed global base of diverse recurring revenue products and services.

Scientific Games and Bally generated combined revenue of around $3 billion in the 12-month period ended March 31.

Scientific Games expects to achieve $220 million of cost synergies and $25 million of capital expenditure savings by consolidating operations and generating efficiencies in manufacturing, engineering, field and customer service and administrative operations.

Scientific Games also anticipates incurring $75 million of costs to achieve the synergies and $40 million in capital costs to complete the integration of the companies.